Tonight a student asked me how to remember something that just won’t “stick”. I thought about it, and offered a piece of advice based on a personal experience: say the wrong thing in front of a native speaker, realize it (maybe let him/her correct you to such an extent that your face turns beet red), and then you will be certain to never repeat that mistake again.
I’m the first one to say that I’m not perfect, but it was certainly a shock to find out that I was wrong about something that I was pretty confident about. And in front of a native speaker? *Blushes* That’s worse than messing up in front of your classmates.
My example isn’t even that exciting. It has to do with not having sufficient listening skills to follow a conversation. But a friend of mine had a truly humiliating experience. She did not believe me when I told her that the verb ‘coger’ had a naughty meaning in Mexican Spanish (like, a variation of the ‘F’ word). She asked another student–who was from Mexico–what the word meant, and he blushed so much that even his ears turned red. She realized that I had been right, and she turned red. So I joined in and turned red, too. None of us will forget that one.
